


What’s Past is Prologue, What to Come

by cooperjones2020



Series: The Beast Within [2]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Archie is clueless as usual, Canon Compliant, Dark Jughead, F/M, He crosses the line from creep to sociopath, I'm sorry about FP, Implied Violence, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Jughead Jones is a stalker, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Self-Harm, Underage Masturbation, Violent Thoughts, i love him too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-11-23 03:56:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11394858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cooperjones2020/pseuds/cooperjones2020
Summary: He wanted to hit whoever made Betty cry. He wanted to hit Betty so she’d keep crying.-----Interrelated vignettes from Jughead Jones’s obsession with Betty Cooper.Dark!Jug, Creepy!Jug, Stalker!Jug, generally Sociopathic!JugRating and tags will change.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am reminded why I do not like writing from the perspective of children. We are going to pretend that Jughead is especially precocious.

The day he met Betty was the day he discovered the monster in his chest.

  


He stared at her through the boughs of the shrub he’d been sitting in for the last five minutes.

Now that the sun had sunk below the eaves of the house, the underside of the boxwood hedge was dark and cool. The shiny leaves brushed against him, tickling his skin and snagging on his hat. He heard Archie, still counting, through the open bedroom window, but he knew the other boy wouldn’t find him here. Even then Jughead Jones knew Archie Andrews wasn’t very smart. For starters, he hadn’t _actually_ meant that Archie should count to a hundred when he said count to a hundred. Archie kept messing up thirty-three and thirty-four and having to go back.

But that was okay. Archie always had new comic books and he didn’t mind sharing his legos. Plus, when they went over to the Andrews for dinner, there was always for enough seconds. Usually thirds too.

In his green and dappled fortress, Jughead hunkered down for a nice quiet wait. He had a dead frog in his pocket that he’d picked up on the walk over.

 

Then the gate opened and what he could only describe as a cartoon character come to life walked through. The little girl had curled blonde pigtails, a stiff pink dress, and saddle shoes with ruffled socks. She was the cleanest thing he’d ever seen. She actually glowed.

She also had a tupperware container.

Jughead debated whether or not to come out. On the one hand, Archie was almost done counting and if he came out, he’d almost certainly lose. On the other hand, if he didn’t come out he might not get to eat whatever was in the tupperware. He’d already eaten two hot dogs but he also knew he’d eaten the end of the cereal at their house that morning.

 

Then the back door opened and Archie ran out, his orange head almost as strong a beacon as her yellow one. “Betty, you came!”

“Of course I did, Archie! And look, my mom sent us brownies!”

Brownies. Okay he was coming out.

He emerged from his crouch in the hedge and the girl—Betty—looked startled.

“Wow, that was a good hiding place, Jug! I never would have found you.”

Jughead shrugged at Archie, but stayed in his place in the bush, his hand around the frog in his pocket.

“Come meet Betty! She’s my new neighbour and she has a sister and a cat and her parents are putting a _swimming pool_ in their yard!”

The girl rolled her eyes. “Archie, I said that was a secret!”

“Jughead’s my best friend, Betty. Secrets don’t count with best friends.” Jughead didn’t think that was true. He was pretty sure there were things his dad hadn’t told Mr. Andrews. Like for instance, he was pretty sure Mr. Andrews didn’t know about the stuff his dad brought home from work. But this didn’t seem to be the moment to point it out.

She moved forward. “Hi Jughead, I’m Betty. Do you want a brownie?”

“Yes.” He stepped out of the shrub and reached up a hand to make sure his hat was on tightly.

 

He ate three brownies and drank a glass of milk while Archie and Betty argued about what they should play. Archie insisted girls couldn’t play with GI Joes. Betty insisted he was wrong. GI Joe looked exactly like Ken so if Archie wouldn’t share a GI Joe with her, she’d just go bring one of her Ken dolls over. And maybe she’d bring Barbie too.

Archie’s eyes widened in horror. Jughead watched their exchange. The sheer speed with which words left her mouth was disorienting. He didn’t think he’d ever heard either of his parents talk that fast. Or that much.

But he was also fascinated by her hands. She kept making fists and releasing them. They curled so tightly he knew they had to be hurting her. But she kept them by her sides. She never raised them like his father sometimes did late at night.

Archie called him back to the present. “Jug, tell her a Ken doll is not the same as a GI Joe. Ken is for _girls_.”

Jughead had never seen a Ken doll, but he also didn’t want Betty to leave. So he sided with Betty. Archie only looked hurt for a moment before shrugging and running upstairs for the basket of toys.

 

He didn’t understand why he couldn’t stop staring at her.

He watched her from his place to her left on the grass. For all Archie’s complaining, as soon as they’d started playing, he’d let Betty take charge of the game. She was currently collecting rocks from around her and ordering Archie to fetch extra food. The GI Joes were going on a stakeout in the desert.

She turned big green eyes on him and asked if he wanted to help her build their fort. He scooted a little bit closer.

 

When her mother called her home, a sharp _Elizabeth_ traveling over the tall, white fence, Betty had looked scared. Immediately, Jughead had a vision of her mom as a fire-breathing dragon. Or as the evil stepmother wanting to lock Betty away in a tower. Something black and foreign clawed its way up his throat and for a moment his vision tunneled. The thing roared in his ears. Jughead had never wanted to play knight before, but he wanted to protect Betty Cooper. He wanted a sword to swing and charge and whack at her mother.

He watched her slip back through the gate and into her own yard. Through the slats of the fence, he could see her mother yelling, saying things like _You knew what time you had to be home_ and _where is my tupperware_ and _how did you get grass stains on your dress_. Betty stared at her shoes. Jughead wished again for a sword. He wished the thing inside him could come out. Archie kept playing with his GI Joe.

 

That night, when Archie fell asleep, Jughead rolled out of his sleeping bag and crept to the windowsill. Her curtains were open. A nightlight illuminated a tiny figure hunched on the bed. If he didn’t breathe, he could hear the strangled sound of her crying.

Without thinking, he pulled the head off the GI Joe that had been on the floor next to him.

He wanted to hit whoever made Betty cry. He wanted to hit Betty so she’d keep crying.

 

 

When his mother left for Toledo the first time, taking a black eye and a ten month-old Jellybean with her, when his father said he was too young to be left alone and dropped him off at the Andrews for a couple hours that turned into five days, Betty Cooper baked him cookies.

By then, he was used to her feeding him. The instances in which Betty appeared at the Andrews house unaccompanied by baked goods were few and far between. She seemed to use them to unlock the magic door that kept her imprisoned. She used them cut a path in the tangled forest that isolated her tower. She used them like an excuse so her mother would let her come over.

The times Archie wasn’t home, the times his parents would fight and Jughead would sneak his way past them or out his window, and would run and run and climb until he could fling himself into the treehouse in the corner of Archie’s yard, Betty’s blonde head would appear, quickly followed a small plastic bag or a tupperware container. When he was really lucky, she’d also bring a sandwich.

On the third day of Gladys and FP’s absence, when Jughead was beginning to wonder if he was an orphan, Betty had arrived.

Betty told him these cookies were special. Polly, older than them and so infinitely wise, had helped bake them. Archie was made to promise not to eat any. They had chocolate chips but no walnuts, which her mom normally put in. They had reese’s pieces. They had _pretzels_. And they were as big as two of his hands.

He ate four while Betty took off her coat.

As usual, he noted how clean she was. He wasn’t sure if pink was her favourite color — he’d never asked her — but she sure wore it a lot. Today, though, she had a white gauze bandage wrapped around her right forearm.

 

Polly the infinitely wise hadn’t been able to find the oven mitts. “So I used a dish towel, only it didn’t work as good. So when my hands got too hot — well I’m not sure cause it happened so fast — but I think I must have tried to balance the tray on my arm instead and then I burned myself.” Tears sprung to her eyes and her lower lip wobbled. “Juggie, it hurt.”

The black thing in his chest, the monster, shifted in its cage. He hugged Betty, because that’s what you were supposed to do. That’s what Mrs. Andrews had done the day before when Jughead had stubbed his toe and said a word that made Archie turn as red as his hair.

Betty sighed and turned her face into his neck.

“What if I sign it? We can color it and draw pictures.”

“It’s not a cast, Juggie.”

“So? It looks the same. And then when you look at it, you can remember how much fun coloring is instead of how much it hurt.” She looked at him the way baby Jellybean sometimes did.

 

Betty had been right, though. A gauze bandage was not the same as a cast. He’d picked a red marker and Betty had picked a pink one — maybe that really was her favorite color — but soon after they started, the colors began to bleed together, and Betty winced and then she started to cry for real. Something darker than the red marker reached up and swallowed the letters of their names.

Mrs. Andrews wasn’t mad. Mrs. Andrews was never mad. Jughead had never even heard her yell. She just took Betty into the bathroom and sat her on the toilet and pulled out a first aid kit.

Jughead hovered in the doorway, shifting from foot to foot. His eyes bugged out when she unwrapped the bandage.

A red, shiny patch as big as a baseball covered the inside of Betty’s forearm. But in the middle of that, old, brown blood had crusted, and something yellow and oozing seeped around it. The red of the fresh blood flowed in and through the the raised yellow bits, making tracks like water between tiles. Tiny blisters ringed the whole mess. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from it.

It was made up of brighter versions of the same colors Betty’s fists made when she clenched them.

But soon enough, Mary had it rewrapped, with a fresh layer of neosporin under the bandage. Betty smiled at him through the droplets that clung to her eyelashes.

“It’s probably time for you to go home now, Betty. We don’t want your mom to be mad.”

“Okay,” said Betty in a small voice. She hugged Jughead and ran out.

When Betty left, Jughead retreated to the treehouse with his cookies. Mr. and Mrs. Andrews had been making Archie leave him alone unless he said he wanted company. He didn’t.

He’d discovered he could see into Betty’s room. She’d forgotten her Nancy Drew binoculars the week before and he could use them to see through her window to the mirror above her dresser. And then he could usually see her sitting on her bed. It wasn’t as good as the view from Archie’s window, but it was good enough.

Jughead took the red and yellow markers out of his pocket. He used his right arm to draw on his left.

 

When it had been nine days, FP returned. He smelled and his beard had grown in and Jughead was pretty sure he was wearing the same clothes. Mr. Andrews had given him a look, a look Jughead had noticed passing between the two men increasingly often, but ultimately, Jughead had been bundled into his coat and sent back to the trailer park.

He went inside but his dad stopped to sit on the steps. When Jughead came back to check on him a while later, he had fallen asleep. Jughead sidled around to his front. There was a small, familiar lump in FP’s front shirt pocket. He reached in and removed the lump gingerly, then snuck back inside with it clutched in his hand. Curled up in his bed with his back to the door, he cupped a palm around the lighter and flicked the flame on and off.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place during 1x01

Jughead Jones sat in his booth at Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe and fought a war with his baser urges. He itched to take his phone out of his pocket. To relive the triumphs of his evening.

But he had deadlines to meet. Self-imposed they might be, but they were deadlines nonetheless. He hovered his cursor over the apps at the bottom of his screen, then opened the word document he’d been typing in earlier.

_“don’t know any better — or they’re old and they don’t want to know any better. This story is about a town, a small town and the people who live in the town, and work there, and fall in love there, get married there, have children there, and yes, even die there._

__

__

_At a certain point, though, you look close enough — and you start seeing the shadows underneath the town. And sometimes…the shadows take over. And you’re living in this place you don’t recognize anymore. And you’re feeling a lot of things, but safe isn’t one them._

_The name of this town is Riverdale._

_And our story begins, I guess, with what the Blossom twins did this summer. On the fourth of July, just after dawn, Jason and Cheryl Blossom drove out to Sweetwater River for an early morning boat-ride. The next thing we know happened for sure is that Dilton Doiley, who was leading Riverdale’s Boy Scout Troop on a bird-watching expedition, came upon._

_Riverdale Police dragged the river for Jason’s body, but hours later, still nothing…_

_Needless to say, there were no fireworks in Riverdale that night. A week later, the Blossom family buried an empty casket, and Jason’s death was ruled an accident, as the story Cheryl told made the rounds._

_That Cheryl saw a ribbon in the water, and Jason reached down to get it, and accidentally tipped the boat, and panicked, and drowned which is super-weird, because Jason was captain of almost every sports team at Riverdale High, including water polo. Not that anyone examined those facts too closely, or asked too many questions. See, the Blossoms had their tendrils wrapped around the entire town — no one wanted to make enemies o”_

It was not his best work. It read like the voiceover of a supersaturated period piece rather than the tightly controlled, forensically measured prose he was going for. But he’d written and rewritten the beginning of this chapter more than a dozen times. He would get to the end of it tonight if it killed him. He would find out what happened next.

Then he caved and opened Photos. Maybe he could—

 

The bell over the door jingled and Jughead looked up to see who’d come in. He quickly toggled his windows and pulled Word back up.

He opened a new document: _“It was midnight when my old friend Archie Andrews arrived at the one place in town that was still open. He was looking for the girl next door. Instead, he found me.”_

Archie Andrews’s bowtie had come untied and his shirt was half-untucked. His hair looked like a drunk girl had been running her fingers through it. She probably had. Jughead watched Archie’s eyes as they seemed to drift toward his booth. Their booth. He ignored the feeling that settled in his stomach. He crossed his arms on the table in front of him and frowned.

“Hey, Pop. Betty hasn’t come in tonight, has she?”

“No. Just the nighthawk’s in tonight.” Pop inflected the first syllable of ‘nighthawk’ as he nodded toward Jughead.

He groaned internally. Did a more banal reference exist?

“Thanks.” Archie hesitated.

“Uh, can I sit, Jughead?”

“If you want.” He did.

“What are you working on?”

“My novel. It’s about this summer, and Jason Blossom.” Good. Evil. Innocence. Guilt. Sin. Obsession. Endings.

Archie tapped the bottom of his phone against the table. “Seventeen years old, and how will he be remembered? As captain of the water polo team?” His eyebrows approached his hairline.

“The Aquaholics? Considering how he died, probably not.”

“No, what I mean is, was he doing everything he was supposed to do? Everything he wanted. I mean, did he even know what that was?”

Jughead flared his nostrils and turned his eyes from Archie to the window. He was talking about Betty. Or that new dark-haired girl. Or, hell, about switching what brand of hair gel he used. But he could have been talking about Jughead. He could have been talking about how Jughead had spent his evening, what he’d done instead of going to the dance and the subsequent Cheryl Blossom-sponsored mating ritual.

“Coach Clayton was in here talking to Pop Tate. Varsity. Does that make you—what—Mr. Popular-Football-God now?”

“No.” Archie stared at the table. “In fact, I’m kind of terrified I lost my best friend tonight.”

“If you mean Betty, whatever happened, just talk to her, man. It would go a long way. Would’ve gone a long way with me.”

Archie nodded. Jughead hoped that would be enough to push him back out the door. It was.

Jughead needed Archie to leave so he could get back to what he was doing. But he also needed Archie to fix whatever he’d done to Betty. The drama of Archie and Betty was the narrative structure to his own life. It was the story he was always writing and deleting and reconstructing. Archie Andrews was the protagonist. Jughead Jones was the understudy. They were the only two people he trusted with Betty Cooper. He refused to contemplate what would happen if Archie broke Betty.

 

When Betty had left Riverdale, that early morning in the middle of June, Jughead had, as with all the important moments in her life, been on hand to observe. He had said goodbye to her the night before, with a projection-booth viewing of _Picnic_. He knew she was saving her final goodbye for Archie, so he got up at six am and camped out in the treehouse before Fred was up to see him through the kitchen windows.

That morning, her hair had been in a braid rather than a ponytail. She looked impossibly beautiful. Archie looked half-asleep. He watched them hug, watched Archie let go of her quickly, watched Betty cling to his shoulders a beat longer. Then he watched Archie go back to bed. Later that day, they were supposed to marathon the new Call of Duty.

That morning, he watched Betty Cooper drive away from him, and Archie Andrews, and Riverdale — that Riverdale that was and no more could be — in a wood-panelled station wagon.

When he’d watched her melt into the vanishing point, he headed to Sweetwater River. His backpack held his laptop, a notebook and pen, two packets of pop tarts, a small fishing knife. He knew words weren’t going to be enough to fill his chest cavity. He needed to fill it before he came back for the video games.

They never played Call of Duty that day. Or any of the days that came after.

 

When Archie had left, Jughead reached into his pocket to pull out the cord and phone stashed there. He plugged them in and pulled Photos back up.

He began clicking through the pictures as they uploaded. The first framed Betty’s window. He’d nearly fallen off the ladder trying to lean back far enough to take it. Through the fluttering curtains, her room was as pristine as it had been the months she’d been gone. But for the white cardigan discarded on her bed and the tube of lipstick lying on its side on her desk.

The next photos showed the inside of her closet, his hand pushing back some of the clothing. He catalogued each new piece. The bright blue of her cheerleading uniform interrupted a gradient of pastels and and creams.

Her hamper contained three pairs of underwear, two bras—one a sports bra, one pale purple lace, one of the ubiquitous white sweaters, black shorts, and a white baseball tee with yellow sleeves. He photographed them on her bed with the hamper balanced teetering off the corner.

In her bathroom, five orange pill bottles stood where there used to only be four. Two were the same, though one bore the label of a pharmacy in California and the other Riverdale Rx. They were almost entirely full.

In her trash can, he could see a used make up wipe, an empty container of acne treatment from the skincare brand he knew she liked, and three cotton balls, crumpled, moist, bloody.

He took a picture.

He took the knife out of his pocket, scored four smalls cuts into his palm and let them drip onto the cotton ball. He took another picture.

 

He fingered the panties in his other pocket and clicked back to his albums. He saved the new photos under ‘August 2016.’ The July album was despairingly empty, containing only two pictures: a single view of her deserted bedroom and a side view of her closet, so he could see what she’d taken with her and imagine what she looked like.

He brought the word document back, deleted the section he’d been staring at before, and replaced it.

_“Our story is about a town. A small town. And the people who live in the town. From a distance, it presents itself like so many other small towns, all over the world._

__

__

_Safe. Decent. Innocent. Get closer though, and you start seeing the shadows underneath._

_The name of our town is Riverdale._

_And our story begins, I guess, with what the Blossom twins did this summer. On the fourth of July, just after dawn, Jason and Cheryl Blossom drove out to Sweetwater River for an earring morning boat-ride. The next thing we know happened for sure is that Dilton Doiley, who was leading Riverdale’s Boy Scout Troop on a bird-watching expedition, came upon Cheryl by the river’s edge._

_Riverdale Police dragged the river for Jason’s body, but never found it. So a week later, the Blossom family buried an empty casket, and Jason’s death was ruled an accident, as the story Cheryl that told made the rounds. That Cheryl dropped a glove in the water and Jason reached down to get it, and accidentally tipped the boat, and panicked, and drowned._

_As for us, we were still talking about the July Fourth tragedy on the last day of summer vacation, when a new mystery rolled into town.”_

 

His photos had finished uploading. He unplugged the USB cord and unlocked his phone. He selected one picture to remain and deleted the rest.

In his hand, an image of a photograph of the two of them at eighth grade graduation stared up at him. Betty was smiling at something off-camera—Archie taking the photo. Jughead was looking at her. It had been tucked in the side of her mirror in early June. It was gone in July. Now, it had returned.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m having a hard time with this fic where I dislike the language of the childhood flashback scenes but I have no problem coming up with the plot, while the plot of the high school scenes is giving me headaches but the language flows more easily. Boo.

The night before he was to be sent to the Riverdale Juvenile Delinquent Center, Jughead Jones had a mission to accomplish. He laid in his bed, with his back to the door, and waited for the sounds of his parents settling in for the night. He watched Jellybean turn over through the mesh of her bed rails. A while later, past the hum of the TV in his parents’ bedroom, he heard his father’s truck start up. When he was sure it was safe, he sat up, pulled his beanie back on, and hopped off the bed to crouch on the floor.

From under his bed, in the farthest corner, behind books, toys, shoes, and a tub of hand-me-down clothing even Jellybean had already outgrown, he pulled out a cardboard box.

The contents of the box had migrated over the years. At first, he’d slipped the flatter pieces between his mattress and bed frame or tucked them behind the headboard. Bigger pieces went into a drawer, covered with a layer of papers, reject toy parts, and gum wrappers. Eventually, though, his souvenirs had grown too many to disperse effectively, so he’d snagged a box from the trailer park’s dumpster. He had kept it in the closet for a while, but one day he’d found his mother rifling through the clothes above it and panic had squeezed his heart at the risk of discovery. It had been safe under the bed for the past few months.

From the box, he lifted a large blonde doll in a pink sweater. He ran his fingers over her skin before setting her on the bed next to him and sifting through the remaining contents. A worn copy of _The Hobbit._ Two drawings of Smaug, one by Jughead and one by Betty. Hers had a scribble on the back from Archie, from where he’d tried to use it to play tic tac toe. A Pokemon trading card—Ninetales—Betty’s favorite. A recipe for the chocolate-reese’s-pretzel cookies, written in pink gel pen and cursive with hearts over the i’s. Betty’s third grade school picture. The scarf she’d given him for Christmas that year. A picture of the three of them from last summer, Betty in the middle with her arms around their necks, her toothy smile showing braces and the quickly closing gap between her two front teeth. He’d folded it so Archie couldn’t be seen.

Outsiders may think Archie was the link between them, that Betty’s light and Jughead’s darkness could never otherwise touch. But she was the beating heart of their triad. She was Jughead’s beating heart, held outside his body.

He added the lighter he’d snuck back out of his father’s pocket when FP had left him in the car at the Whyte Worm. He slipped the photo in his pocket before replacing the doll and the box’s lid. On his way to the front door, he stopped in the kitchen to snag two plastic bags, a flashlight, and the garden spade that had lived there since his mother’s aborted attempted at raising tomatoes.

In the woods beyond Sunnyside, he wrapped the box in the plastic bags and buried it in as deep a hole as he could dig. He did not cry, though the black thing inside him raged and screamed and rattled the bars of its cage.

  


  


Three years later, when they were 13, Mary Andrews moved to Chicago, Archie Andrews asked out Ginger Lopez, and Jughead Jones saw Betty Cooper naked.

Archie asked Ginger out at Field Day, during the last week of school, after the egg toss. When Betty had looked ready to bolt, unsteady on her giraffe legs, Jughead slid his hand down her arm to grip her wrist, leaned in, and said, “Do you think Archie knows that means he’ll have to talk to her for more than five minutes at a time? I didn’t think minions normally got subplots of their own. I wonder if Cheryl will have to write a script for her.”

She responded with one short, semi-hysterical-sounding giggle. He could feel the delicate bones of her hand flutter when she flexed her fingers. Warmth spread through his chest and curled around the muscles of his arms and legs.

Betty agreed to be his partner for the next four events. He kept up a running commentary for her on his head canons for their classmates, his analysis of their athletic prowess, his skepticism with regard to their intelligence.

“Plebeians, the lot of them.” That earned him a fraction of a smile. Not good enough.

By the end of the day, he had her laughing and the haunted look had left her eyes. She only spared Ginger and Archie one long, lingering look before slipping his arm through his and letting him walk her home.

His own walk back to the trailer park later that afternoon echoed with the sounds in his head. He loved to hear her laugh. Almost as much as he loved to hear her cry.

  


One month later and Archie and Ginger had been on exactly one date. Jughead had a sneaking suspicion interesting conversation and shared interests were not the foundation of their relationship. While Fred Andrews was at work and Archie was at football day camp, Jughead had been letting himself into the house with the copy he’d had made of the spare key he found in the junk drawer. Usually, Betty spent the mornings volunteering at the library, and Jughead sat in front of the window air conditioner in the living room and tried to write. But that day Alice’s station wagon had been in the driveway, so Jughead vaulted up the stairs to see if Betty was in her room. If she couldn’t come out, maybe they could talk about their summer reading across the air between their windows.

He never got a chance to ask her, though. When he walked into Archie’s room, he saw Betty Cooper standing in front of her bed, surveying three bras displayed on the comforter. They still had their tags. She was topless.

His first thought was that she did not look like the girls in his father’s Playboy magazines. His second thought was that he ought to leave immediately.

He didn’t.

He set his backpack on the ground in front of him and slowly crouched down to remove the disposable camera he’d found the week before.

When he’d used up all the available film, when Betty disappeared through the doorway to her bathroom, he bolted. Even though he knew neither of the Andrews men would be home for at least two hours, he locked himself in the guest bath.

He ripped open his pants and masturbated until it hurt. He could not get the image of Betty, topless, wandering around her room, out of his head—the light, downy hair that caught the sunlight on her tanned back, the triangular swell of her tits.

His mind spun with images of Betty — Betty stretched on her floral bedspread, Betty on her knees, Betty’s face, her whole body, red and marked. Bruised. Scratched. Bitten.

  


Jughead met the eyes of his own reflection in the fractured mirror above the sink. His hand was bleeding. His beanie had fallen off. Hair covered one side of his face.

He looked like his father.

A dull whirring noise filled his ears.

A window faced the open bathroom door. He walked up to it, punched a hole in the corner pane with the hand that was already bleeding, then went to Archie’s room to look for a baseball, which he left rolling in the sink.

He calmly closed and locked the back door behind him and walked away. He did not come back for two days.

When he did, Betty cooed over his battered hand. She insisted on cleaning and rewrapping it for him. She held his wrist under the running water of the Andrews’ kitchen sink, but after minute she began to squeeze.

The tendons in her hands bulged and Jughead felt the bones of his arm compress. He called her name, but when she turned her face to him, her eyes were shining and unfocused. Her lips, wet and parted.

He pulled his hand to break her grip. She blinked, then turned behind her to grab the first aid kit. She proceeded as if nothing had happened. Later, four, thin, finger-shaped bruises joined the chaos.

Archie did not make the connection between his broken skin of Jughead’s hand and the broken glass upstairs.

  


  


The first time Jughead lost control of the monster inside of him, he saw Betty Cooper kissing Reggie Mantle on the cheek. In Reggie’s hands, a pink and white kite with leaves stuck to the cross bar. He had been tall, even then. Jughead watched them from behind a tree as Betty kissed him, thanked him, fluttered her big eyes at him.

Jughead felt dark, acrid smoke roil through his ribcage, filling him from the inside out. He had to get away. But Betty was at the park. Archie and Mr. Andrews were at home.

He tried to go to his own home but his mother had the neighbor ladies over and had shooed him out.

His feet took him to the only place his mind could be free of his body, the Riverdale Elementary School library. The lights had already been shut off for the day, but that was okay. Emergency lamps cast small pools of blue light onto the floor every few feet. It smelled of air conditioning and paper. He walked to the farthest corner and brushed his fingertips against the spines of the books as he began to wind his way through the labyrinth of shelves.

Betty knew she belonged to Archie. She knew she and Archie belonged to _him._ Archie may not get it, but she knew the rules. Betty was friends with everyone but she spent all her time with them. She _had_ to know.

Watching Betty and Archie’s friendship made Jughead feel a way his own friendships with the two didn’t. When he stood next to Betty or Archie on his own, the wrinkles on his clothes or the bags under his eyes were always more pronounced by contrast. But together, they illuminated everything around them. Together, they shone so brightly that Jughead could, at least for a while, ignore his own darkness.

  


He needed to hurt something. He could not hurt Betty Cooper. He could not reach her to punish her for betraying him. Every day, at precisely 5:30, she returned to her ivory tower. She did not have the key.

His fingertips began to numb as they traversed hundreds of spines. He came to a row of small yellow books with rough covers and stopped.

His face was wet. Someone was shouting.

He ripped the books from the shelves as quickly as he could, flinging them with all his strength. They crashed against the opposite bookshelf and landed on the floor—covers open—pages bent—like limbs, splayed and indecent.

He dropped to his knees, piled them into a pyramid, and lit them on fire.

The dusty pages caught quickly. He watched until the flames grew high enough to lap at the second row of shelves, then slipped out the gym door unseen.

  


But elementary schools have security cameras.

She promised to write him letters every day. But even then, with a cynicism he could not remember ever being without, Jughead knew her mother would never allow it.

And she hadn’t. Betty had written the letters anyway. When he came home, they sat together while he read them. She held his hand while he cried. She knew he’d set the fire. She did not know he burned Nancy Drew.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He turned his attention back to his dinner and contemplated the possibility that maybe one or two of the threads that used to connect Betty to Archie might now connect to him instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We’re ditching the Shakespeare. Instead, I leave you with this quote which is delightfully creepy out of context: “Since he longed to take possession of something deep inside them, he needed to slit them open” (Kundera, _The Unbearable Lightness of Being_ , 215).

By the time he stood across from her in the dusty classroom that housed five ancient PC monitors, two typewriters, and a microfiche reader, Jughead had given up fighting his obsession with Betty Cooper. He had given up fighting the way it hurt when she looked at Archie. He liked the hurt, liked the pain, liked the reminder he was alive.

When Betty and Archie seemed to be alright, after the disastrous night of the back to school dance, Jughead felt the embers in his stomach die down. But that ease of tensions came coupled with a new awareness of Betty. She seemed lighter to him. Not that she felt that way—he could still sometimes see her struggle with theashes of her feelings, could see her face fall when she thought no one was looking. But the air around her seemed to be lighter, as if some of the threads that tied to her to Archie had been cut.

When he appeared in the doorway of the student newspaper office, he did so silently, so she didn’t notice him where she was bent over her work behind one of the ancient computer monitors. She wore a burgundy top today, new, one he hadn’t seen and that provided a marked contrast to her normal colour palette. He liked it. He liked the possibilities it represented.

“If print journalism is dead, what am I doing here?” he asked her, leaning against the doorway with one leg crossed over the other.

“The  _Blue and Gold_  isn’t dead, Juggie. It’s just dormant,” she replied, pressing her hands together in front of her heart, before running a finger along a dusty keyboard. “But waking up. You’re writing a novel, right? About Jason Blossom’s murder?”

“I am. Riverdale’s very own  _In Cold Blood._ ” He plucked a magnifying glass out of a pencil cup and held it up in front of him, looking at Betty through it.

“Which started out as a series of articles. I’m hoping you’ll come write for the  _Blue and Gold._ ” She looked so hopeful, so earnest and untouchable, he was a goner before he even walked in.

He tried anyway. “I just don’t think the school paper’s the right fit for my voice.”

“Juggie, Jason’s death changed Riverdale. People don’t wanna admit that, but it’s true. We all feel it. Nothing this bad was ever supposed to happen here, but it did. I wanna know why.” Every time she called him Juggie, his heart rate slowed down. It had been her nickname for him since they were kids and its effects were just as strong and just as addictive as morphine.

“Would I get complete freedom?” It was a feint, but he was interested in her answer.

“I-I’ll help and edit and suggest but it’s your story. It’s your voice.”

“Doesn’t sound like complete freedom but I’m in.”

“Okay, great. Um, in that case, I have your first assignment.” She did that thing with her hands again, like she was in an old episode of the Donna Reed Show and her body just couldn’t contain its joy. “There’s one person who was at the river on July 4th that no one’s talking about.”

“Dilton Doiley and his scouts.”

“Exactly.”

He brushed his thumb off his nose in gesture of camaraderie and conspiracy and turned to leave. He didn’t need complete freedom. He’d lost it long ago in any case. But, since the dance, and the night he and Archie had joined her and Veronica at Pop’s, he did need increasing access to Elizabeth Cooper.

 

_We crave absolutes. They comfort us. But life is infinitely more complex than that._ He was still attempting to untangle the threads that used to bind Betty to Archie when he discovered Archie and Grundy in the music classroom and it fucked everything up. It threw off his entire world axis in which Archie was deserving of Betty and he, Jughead, was not. Then, Betty found out about it. And with that, she threatened to slip back out of his control.

Closer access to Betty Cooper meant many things for Jughead Jones. It meant re-memorizing the smell of her hair and analyzing all the micro expressions that gave him insight into her moods. It meant resuming his game of guessing which underwear she was wearing that day, double points if he figured it out before he saw her bra strap.

It also meant seeing the places her enamel was wearing thin. After Dilton had left and they’d discussed the connotations of Archie being with Grundy at the river’s edge, Betty snapped a pencil in two with the force of the grip of her left hand. But she kept talking as if she hadn’t noticed.

He cut her off, “Betts, promise you’ll sleep on it before you go off the rails. We don’t know for sure what happened.”

She was staring at the cork board over his left shoulder. He could count the veins in the purplish skin beneath her eyes. He knew she wasn’t sleeping.

He slowly reached forward and unclenched her hand, removing the broken pencil pieces and brushing away the splinters that clung to her palm. She didn’t flinch, or even blink, when he touched her fresh half-moon cuts.

 

He wasn’t really sure how he wound up in a booth at Pop’s with Kevin and Veronica. He’d been typing away on his laptop, content as he was capable of being, when Betty walked in. Next thing he knew, he was ranting about the drive-in to a semi-captive audience. At least she’d bought him a burger again.

“The drive-in closing is just one more nail in the coffin that is Riverdale. No. Forget Riverdale. In the coffin of the American Dream. As the godfather of indie cinema, Quentin Tarantino, likes to say—”

“Please, God, no more Quentin Tarantino references,” Kevin cut him off.

“What? I’m pissed. And not just about losing my job. The Twilight Drive-In should mean something to us. People should be trying to save it.” The drive-in, the diner, the friendly neighborhood Hitchcock blonde to his right, all of the pieces of Riverdale that looked so great on paper. That, cliche as they were, kept him from sliding into the darkness that loomed.

Veronica interrupted his thoughts. “In this age of Netflix and VOD, do people really want to watch a movie in a car? I mean, who even goes there?”

“People who want to buy crack.” Trust the sheriff’s son to dismiss such an iconic emblem of working class Americana and Jughead right along with it.

“And cinephiles and car enthusiasts, right, Betts?” Betty knew what he was talking about, she knew what the drive-in meant to him.

“Totally.” But she wasn’t paying attention to him. He began tapping out a staccato rhythm with his foot.

“Anyway, it’s closing because the town owns it but didn’t invest in it. So when an anonymous buyer made Mayor McCoy an offer she couldn’t refuse—” Jughead stared out the window as he spoke.

“Anonymous buyer? What do they have to hide? No one cares.”

“I do. Also you guys should all come to closing night. I’m thinking  _American Graffiti_. Or is that too obvious?” He directed it at the three of them, but he looked at Betty.

“I vote for anything starring Audrey Hepburn. Or Cate Blanchett.” Surprise, surprise.

“Or  _The Talented Mr. Ripley_. Betty, your choices?”

“Everything okay, B?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m just thinking. Um…Maybe  _Rebel Without a Cause_?” Betty flicked her eyes at him and he couldn’t stop himself from smiling at her.

He turned his attention back to his dinner and contemplated the possibility that maybe one or two of the threads that used to connect Betty to Archie might now connect to him instead. He vaguely registered Veronica getting up and returning and the sound of the bell on the door jingling behind him.

“Now that’s an odd combo of people,” Kevin said.

Jughead and Betty both turned to look over their shoulders in one motion. It was Archie, Fred, and Grundy. Fuck. He glanced at Betty. Her mouth dropped open.

“I’ll be right back.”

“Betty, no. Don’t.” He made a half-hearted attempt to reach for her, his hand closing on empty air. He wanted to protect her, but what more could he do? She needed to snip the rest of the threads on her own. And truthfully? Archie needed a Betty Cooper-style kick in the ass.

Jughead grimaced at the two of them out of the window.

Again, Veronica’s voice intruded. “What’s happening out there? Do we know? Is it about me?”

Archie’s back was to him, but he could see the hurt and concern all over Betty’s beautiful face. “I have a strong inkling. And no. Also, I’d let it go.”

“Yes, but you’re you and I’m me. You do you, girl. I’ll be back.” He rolled his eyes at Veronica and settled lower in the booth.

“What was it like before she got here? I honestly cannot remember.”

Jughead didn’t respond. He sneered and ate the strawberry off Betty’s milkshake.

 

His final attempt to save the drive-in had been a bust. Mayor McCoy shot him down and even Fred wouldn’t help him. So,  _Rebel Without a Cause_  played to a full house. Of course. Nothing like nostalgia to pack them in.

Jughead watched from the projection room. She didn’t come. Whenever she came to the drive-in, she’d come up to the booth and drag him down to socialize for a while. Or she joined him up there with a blanket and some snacks.

He texted her, a little while after the movie started, but she didn’t respond.

She didn’t come.

 

The chill woke Jughead early the next morning. Indian summer had faded and no one had ever bothered to insulate the projection booth. He registered that he had a novel of a text from Betty sitting unread on his phone. He wasn’t ready to answer her yet.

He ate a stale pop tart and, from his seat next to the projector, he surveyed his dilapidated kingdom. A plastic bag blew across the empty lot. Discarded soda cans and spilled popcorn decorated the grass like some kind of fucked up Christmas tree.

When he could delay it no more, he stood to finish packing.

The Betty box had grown over the years. It took up more than half his backpack space, but he wouldn’t risk leaving it at the trailer. A drunk FP was an unpredictable FP.

Jughead watched the last reel finish winding then did a slow turn around the room that had been his only safe haven the past few months. He grabbed a shirt he’d missed packing, shoved it in his backpack, and, with an old photo of him and Jellybean in hand, closed the door.

He didn’t exactly need to add vandalism to his record, but seeing as Fred was the one tearing the drive-in down, he reckoned he was pretty safe. So he marked out “JUGHEAD JONES WUZ HERE” in black spray paint along with an outline of his crown on the side of the concession stand.

Then he tossed the can of spray paint away, to join the litter on the ground. When he turned to leave, FP was standing behind him. Jughead looked away so they wouldn’t make eye contact.

His father and the Serpents had been hanging around the drive-in for months, but he only sought him out when he hit the level of drunk of slurring his words and talking about reuniting their family. It was a little early, even for FP, but Jughead still didn’t want to talk to him.

When his father spoke though, his words were clear: “They’ll tear that booth down too. Raze the whole place, send it to the junkyard. And us with it.”

“Yeah. Or maybe they’ll save it. All the pieces. Store it in the town hall attic and rebuild it in a hundred years. Wonder who the hell we were.” The image made him smile. Then he remembered who he was talking to and cut his eyes away to frown at the ground.

“So where you gonna live now?”

“I’ll figure it out, Dad. I always do.” He just barely stopped himself from checking his dad with his bag as he walked past. That kind of aggression never worked out well for him with FP, and he didn’t need any more surprise injuries that needed explaining away to Betty.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So Jughead let her talk him down, let her suck him back into the case until he could ignore the voice inside him that wanted to hit something. Mostly because he didn’t have another choice in the moment. He could feel his heartbeat in the air around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do we know when Betty’s birthday is? For the sake of this chapter, we’re going to pretend it’s in the summer/near the summer.

“This is how my dad had his Jason Blossom murder board before it was trashed.” Kevin pushed a pin into the cork board and turned around. They were in the Blue and Gold office during their lunch break, Betty dragging Kevin into what was normally their time together. But, if it helped the case, he supposed he could put up with it.

“Any leads on who did that? And what they were looking for?” Jughead asked, before returning to chewing on his thumb nail.

“Nope. No fingerprints.” Kevin moved to face Betty. “But they stole a bunch of files, background checks, and all the video and audiotapes of police interviews.”

Before she could respond, Jughead heard the sound of the doorknob turning. His head whipped to meet the new intrusion before Betty or Kevin did. Trev Brown leaned in.

“Oh. Hey, Betty.” He gave an awkward little wave and smiled at her. Everyone smiled at her.

“Trev, hi.” Betty stood up, pulling down the back of her sweater. Her back was turned to Jughead, but he could hear the happiness in her voice.

“Sorry to interrupt.”

“Oh, no. It’s okay. We’re just, ah, working on—”

“Our murder board.” Jughead couldn’t resist. He raised his eyebrows and stared at Trev til the other boy blinked.

“Well, I just wanted to make sure we’re still on for tomorrow.”

“Absolutely. It’s a date.” Jughead felt all the blood drain to his feet. “I mean, I’ll—I’ll see you there. Bye.”

“Uh, see you.” Trev backed out of the room, still smiling at Betty.

“Uh, bye.”

“Going on a date with Trev. Does Mama Cooper know about that?” For the second time that day, and ever, Jughead had a reason to be thankful to Kevin Keller. He wouldn’t have been able to put into so many words. Or any words. A toneless roar filled his chest cavity.

“Kev, I’m not on house arrest,” Betty spluttered. “Okay, she’s out of town at a Women in Journalism spa retreat. Anyway, I mean—it’s not a ‘date’ date.” Betty moved toward the back of the room, away from the two of them.

He found his words. “You just called it a date. You literally said, ‘It’s a date.’” This was the most stereotypical conversation he’d ever been a part of.

“That’s just my cover. Really it’s an intelligence gathering mission. We should focus on the one thing we have access to that your dad doesn’t—the kids at Riverdale High. You know, maybe Trev knows something about Jason he didn’t think was important.”

So Jughead let her talk him down, let her suck him back into the case until he could ignore the voice inside him that wanted to hit something. Mostly because he didn’t have another choice in the moment. He could feel his heartbeat in the air around them.

 

One year, Betty got an American girl doll for her birthday. For over a month beforehand, she had subjected Jughead to repeated viewings of the catalogue—Archie wouldn’t sit still long enough to make it past the first couple of pages. She’d gotten a Truly Me doll. And it was truly her, right down to the blonde hair and green eyes and the silly pink sweater it wore.

For a few weeks, she took the doll with her everywhere. It accompanied them to the playground and the woods. It even came on the day trip to the beach Mr. and Mrs. Andrews planned. She’d annoyed Jughead that day. She wouldn’t swim with him. She insisted the Betty doll couldn’t get wet, and instead sat on a towel brushing the doll’shair.

He’d never been to the beach before. He couldn’t swim like Archie. Normally when he was scared, Betty was there to hold his hand without him having to tell her. He didn’t know how to tell her. So he stood in the water up to his waist and watched Archie splash in the waves and Betty sit on the sand. He tried to play catch with Archie and Mr. Andrews but he wasn’t good at throwing. Every time he tried to get out, to go sit with Betty, Mrs. Andrews would shoo him back toward the shoreline, telling him Betty was okay and he should swim. He knew she was okay. He wasn’t.

Betty had broken the unspoken rules that gave him order and made up for all the things that happened when he wasn’t with her and Archie.

Then one day, Archie told him Betty was grounded. She’d lost her Betty doll. Archie had been able to hear the sound of Mrs. Cooper yelling right through his front windows.

That night, when his dad had passed out and his mom had locked herself in the bedroom with his sister and a blaring television set, Jughead snuck out of the front door of the trailer. He slid through the darkness back to Archie’s house. He had a knack for opening the gate silently and creeping along the fence line so Vegas wouldn’t hear him and bark. He scurried up the ladder and catapulted his backpack into the treehouse ahead of him. Once inside, he crouched on his heels and pulled out the Nancy Drew binoculars and his pocket knife.

Betty sat on her bed, reading a book. Her nose looked swollen. Betty being grounded wasn’t a new occurrence, but it was one Jughead always took full advantage of. It was his favorite of Alice Cooper’s regular rotation of punishments. When she was grounded, she was easier to watch. He always knew where she was. He always knew she was safe. Alice Cooper may have yelled but she never did anything more.

He wanted to keep Betty safe so no one could hurt her. So no one else could hurt her. But him. He didn’t want her to hurt a lot. Not a lot. Just enough for her face to turn red and the tears to well up. Sort of like she looked like now. Like when his father grabbed his mother’s wrist too tightly. Not a lot, just a little.

He reached back into his backpack and pulled out the Betty doll. Her hair was all messed up from being inside the bag. He used his fingers to smooth it out. He turned herupside down and watched the little plastic eyelids open and shut. 

Then he balanced her on his knee and pulled her skirt so it bunched with the pink sweater. He picked up his pen knife with his other hand and carved a crown into the Betty doll’s plastic thigh.

 

The worst thing about hope was that it grew like a weed. Since he’d found her diary, Betty Cooper had consumed even more of his thoughts, waking and asleep. He was right when he thought she was getting better after Archie gave her feelings back to her. But he hadn’t foreseen the other things the journal would tell him, the ways it would rearrange the pieces of her in his mind. He also hadn’t foreseen Trev Brown. Trev Brown did not fit with those new pieces.

And so, he had to make sure Trev Brown did not screw those pieces up. Not when he’d just begun to probe their meaning. So, he sat in his usual booth in the diner, laptop out, headphones on. No music playing.

Betty waved at him when she came in, Trev holding the door behind her. She looked so beautiful in her soft pink sweater—a new one, he noticed. And her lips were a few shades darker, a little shiny looking. He couldn’t decide if he was angry she’d dressed up for her not-date or thankful that he got to see her. So he kept his headphones in and pretended he didn’t notice her wave. Then she sat with her back to him in a booth two rows up.

Perfect. Just close enough that he could eavesdrop.

After a few minutes of small talk that made Jughead want to eat his napkin, Trev said, “I think it’s great what you guys are doing for Jason.” Here we go. He hunched forward so it would look like he was typing away furiously, but really it brought his head that much closer to the back of Betty’s.

“You two were on the water polo team together. Were you guys close?”

Trev leaned forward at that point and dropped his voice, so Jughead couldn’t hear what he said. But Betty’s voice rang clear as crystal in his ear. He was pretty sure he could be dead and he’d still hear Betty’s voice.

“Do you know why?”

“I thought it was about your sister, to be honest. They’d been dating a few weeks when he changed.” Jughead risked a glance up from his computer to see Trev’s face. He looked like a kicked puppy, desperate and nauseating.

“Changed? In what way?”

“We stopped hanging out. He wouldn’t call me back, and then—” Jughead couldn’t hear what Trev said next, but he saw Betty’s ponytail swish back and forth. “Anything he could sell for cash, he was hawking.” Trev’s volume had increased, but now it dropped to a whisper.

The next thing Jughead could make out was Betty saying, “And all of this started after Jason and Polly got together?”

Over the edge of his laptop, Jughead saw Trev nod. Bingo. He  _knew_  Polly was involved. Now he just had to look surprised when Betty told him.

Betty stayed for another forty-five minutes or so. Not that he looked at the clock. They talked about school and sports and Betty’s work to restart the paper. What Jughead supposed normal teenagers usually talked about.

After they paid their bill, Trev offered to walk her home but she demurred, saying her mom was expecting her at the Register. When Trev got up to leave, Betty flicked a glance at him before going to the bathroom. Any other day, he would have gotten her silent signal to stay. That Alice wasn’t expecting her. That she was waiting for him. Any other day and he would have rooted himself into the cracked vinyl of the booth, ready to plant himself until Betty released him.

But not today.

Jughead quickly closed his laptop and stowed it in his bag. As soon as the door to the diner had closed behind Trev, he hazarded a glance at the door to the women’s bathroom. It was still firmly shut. So Jughead slid out of the booth and hurried after Betty’s not-date.

Trev Brown wouldn’t be bothering them again.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She would pine after Archie. She would “date” Trev. She would kiss Veronica. But her darkness is his. Today, she will pick him. He has a plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay y’all, this fic has felt a bit like a sword of Damocles hanging over my head and I’m so excited it’s now wrapped—my first chaptered fic! In case you missed it, there’s one more one-shot to complete the series that will go up on Friday. Prepare yourselves, because Dark!Betty comes out to play.

_Every town has one. The house on the haunted hill all the kids avoid. Now that Jason was buried in the earth, it would only be a matter of time until something poisonous bloomed in that long, cold shadow cast by his death. Whatever grew in the rich black soil of the Blossoms’ garden always found its way to the town. Whether it was murder or love or secrets or lies._

He loved the murder board. He loved that Betty had touched every single piece of it. Earlier, when he was in the Blue and Gold office alone, he had run his fingers over every photograph, every scrap of paper, every tangled strand of red string, willing his fingertips to absorb the oils from her skin.

After the memorial, after Betty cornered her father about his conversation with Clifford Blossom, they returned to the office to regroup. He leaned back against a desk and watched her a few feet away from him as she grappled with the splintered fragments of her family.

“Juggie, I feel like I don’t even know who my mom and dad are anymore.”

“Betty,” he stood and moved toward the murder board. “If your parents lied about Jason and Polly, there’s probably more that they lied about.” He turned back to look at her.

“What do you mean?” She moved to follow him. He’d dealt with Trev, but now he wanted something from her. Some sign that they were in this together.

“Your dad said he would do anything to protect Polly. So the next logical question is, how far would he go to protect her?” He turned to the table in front of the board and grabbed an index card.

“Jughead, whoever broke into Sheriff Keller’s house and stole all his evidence wasn’t at the drive-in.” She looked at him with her big green eyes shining. He could imagine the look of the tears he knew she was holding back. “My dad wasn’t at the drive-in.” He handed her the index card and watched to see what she would do. With just a moment of hesitation, she pinned it right smack dab in the center, below Jason’s yearbook picture. God, he was proud of her. He pushed her over that barrier and she let him. He wanted to scoop her up in a hug and to devour her.

Instead, he said, “We need to talk to Polly.” Betty took a deep breath and gave him a wobbly nod. His heart slowed and beat thickly, as if submerged in maple syrup, as he watched her. The string between her and her parents was pulled taut. It would be easy to snip. It would be one more string he could hoard for himself.

 

On thefirstnight he spent in the janitor’s closet at school, after the drive-in closed, the third thing he did was seek out Betty’s locker. He’d stolen a set of maintenance keys a few weeks ago and had a copy to the school’s front doorsmade, just in case. The drive-in had a cot, but it didn’t have a shower. And they’d stopped running water to the bathrooms at the campground when it had closed for the season on the first of September.

So the first thing he did was take a shower. The second thing he did was break into the cafeteria kitchen and scrounge up some dinner. Then he headed down the hallway with the science classrooms.

She’d had the same combination since sixth grade: Polly’s birthday. He rummaged through her locker for anything new, anything that could add to the store of Betty Cooper trivia he kept locked inside him.

He already knew about the Neosporin in the pink pencil box on the top shelf. But when he opened it, the tube was almost empty. It might have been that way for a while. There’s no way she’d used that much this early into the school year—she probably brought an old half-used tube from home anyway.  But still. He wanted to slice the scars off her palms.

He replaced the pencil box and reached for the stack of notes besides it. He unfolded their intricate shapes and pressed them flat before scanning each one. All from Veronica and Kevin. All useless.

“No one cares you can’t get dick, Kev,” he whispered under his breath as he struggled to re-fold the notes.

Then, he reached over her school books and slid his hand down the back wall of the locker to see if anything had fallen. But rather than the detritus of further notes and to-do lists he expected, he found two slim books. One, the worn copy of  _The Story of O_ he’d caught her reading a few weeks ago _._  He hadn’t believed the story she fed Cheryl about writing an exposé on book banning. So he pocketed it to look at later, in the luxury of his closet. The other, the small pink book he recognized as her diary. Jackpot.

It was only about a two-thirds full but the last entry seemed to be from a few days before — a description of her showdown with Archie outside Pop’s. Odd. She normally wrote in it every day. He flipped back to the first entry, the day she arrived in LA, and began to scan, until his own name grabbed his attention.

_I finally got Jug to talk to me. He’s been avoiding me since I got back. I don’t know what happened with him and Arch over the summer — though it seems to be better now — but he better get it through his thick skull that Archie has no business in our relationship_.  _Whatever Archie did to him doesn’t affect him and me. He looks skinnier. Last night at Pop’s, I convinced him I was full so he’d eat the rest of my fries. I wonder if he’d be offended if I offered to pack him a lunch._  A lump formed in his throat that he didn’t understand.But when he turned the page, the rest of the entry devolved into a description of cheerleading routines.

A few pages later something else caught his eye:

_I think some of my clothes have gone missing. If Polly were here, I’d swear she’d stolen them, but she’s not so that can’t be it._

Sometime around early September, mentions of Archie, and especially her feelings for Archie, had dropped off sharply. Simultaneously, her mentions of  _him_  had grown. He tried not to read anything into it. It was probably just because of the paper. He was around her more so of course she would think about him more. Write about him more.

But then,

_Dear Diary,_

_It happened again. I’m losing time. I remember talking to Chuck at Pop’s and making the plan with Veronica and Ethel. But I don’t remember showing up at Ethel’s house. I don’t remember calling him Jason. And I don’t know where I got the black wig._

_This hasn’t happened since I was in LA. I had hoped it was some freaky coincidence brought on by not enough humidity and too much green juice. I don’t know what to do or who I can even tell._

_Who will I be if I let go?_

_Sometimes Jughead looks at me as if he knows_.

That was it. She ended the entry and then the next one was about Archie and Grundy. Fuck.

Channeling all his darkness into his obsession with Betty Cooper allowed Jughead to maintain a thin veneer of normalcy. That she might be doing the same to him…

The needy beast of a thing in his chest roared to life.

* * *

 

Most days, he does a pretty good job at seeming normal. Well, not normal. Reggie likes to call him things like Donnie Darko and Wednesday Adams, but, still, he manages to keep most of his darkness on the inside.

But all of these days from the past swirl in Jughead’s mind as he lets himself into the Andrews’ garage and commandeers Fred’s ladder. The day he met Betty. The day Betty burned her arm making him cookies. The day she got grounded for losing her American Girl doll. The day he set Nancy Drew on fire. The first day he saw her topless. The day she drove away from Riverdale in a wood-panelled station wagon. The day she asked him to join her on  _the Blue and Gold_. The day the drive-in closed. The day he found her diary. The day she went on a “date” with Trev Brown.

Polly had accidentally scratched Betty’s cheek when the orderlies were dragging her out of their hug earlier. Jughead spent the car ride home fighting the urge to lick the blood off her face.

She would pine after Archie. She would “date” Trev. She would kiss Veronica. But her darkness is his. Today, she will pick him. He has a plan.

She sits at her vanity, fingering her necklace and staring at the floor when Jughead gets to the top of the ladder beneath her window. He wraps gently on the closed glass and her head turns, ponytail whipping behind her. He can tell she’s surprised, but her face quickly gives way to a smile as she rushes over to open the window.

“Hey there, Juliet. Nurse off duty?” She steps back so he can climb in. “You haven’t gone full ‘Yellow Wallpaper’ on me yet, have you?”

Betty’s voice is rough, as if she’s been crying. “They’re crazy. My parents are crazy.”

“They’re parents. They’re all crazy.”

“No, but what if—what if Polly is too?” Betty stammers. “The way she was talking to me, the way she looked at me. And now all I can think is, maybe I’m crazy like they are.” She’s spiralling. Jughead puts a hand on shoulder and he feels some of the tension drain out as she sighs, as  _his_ touch does that to her.

“Hey. We’re all crazy.” He looks into her eyes, willing her to know what he knows. To know they’re alike. She smiles at him and looks at the floor.

When he speaks, her eyes drift back up. “We’re not our parents, Betty. We’re not our families.” He might be imagining it, but he thinks her eyes pause on his lips on their journey back to the floor. “Also—”

“What?” she whispers. She stares into his eyes again as he flicks his gaze all over her face. “What?” she asks again, louder. She smiles at him with half of her mouth and raises one eyebrow.

He takes her face in his hands and kisses her. When she doesn’t pull back right away, the monster inside him cheers. Then when she kisses him back, he sighs and it settles into a contented purr.

She breaks the kiss, “The car!”

He smiles at her and raises his eyebrows. “Wow. That’s what you were thinking about in the middle of our moment?” If he hadn’t just felt the insistent pressure of her lips against his own, he’d be more upset. But he knows, better than anyone now, how Betty’s mind works.

“No. Polly talked about a car Jason had stashed for them down Route 40. Near some sign? If we can find it, we can confirm Polly’s story.”

“Well, one way or another.”

“I need to know, Juggie.” Then she leans forward and presses another soft kiss against his lips. He’d do anything for her. He’d kill for her. Of course he’ll go looking for the damn car with her. Because now, he’s got her. He’s finally got the real life Betty doll.

**Author's Note:**

> https://cooperjones2020.tumblr.com/


End file.
